The Alchemy of the Heart, Part Two...

                                                                           "Magnificat" by Ben Wildflower 

I am hopeful that the above, wonderfully-wicked, portrayal of Mother Mary thoroughly violates your sensibilities! Living in an era in which the Unholy Trinity (privilege, profit, and power) holds sway over our culture, indeed, over every aspect of our culture, we are factually in dire need of our Rowdy Mother: kicking ass (at least metaphorically)... If you haven't the faintest idea as to what I am writing about, perhaps you might look up Luke's Gospel: right there, near the beginning, is this Rowdy Mother (to be, of course)... It's likely that Luke, very much later, interviewed Mary and heard, directly from her luscious lips, the words we know as the Magnificat... (I am feeling rowdy myself, so I'm also hoping that describing her lips as luscious also throws you for a big loop!)

Inevitably, the honest reader of the Magnificat, comes away from it with a certain "stunning" to her soul... Mother Mary makes an unmistakable values judgment which should also bear unmistakable weight in our spirituality, economics, and our politics: cast down the mighty, send the rich away... Everyone twists the teachings of her son, Yeshua bar Alaha, to suit their agenda and donation apparatus: but do they also have the gall to twist the Mother's words?

Of course not! But they do forget them! They do excise them through a rapid-page-movement: "Okay! Jesus was born! Now, let's move on to the really good part: he dies! And is resurrected so that we can gain entrance into heaven!" Mainstream theology manifests, in plain view, its adoration of the Unholy Trinity: by preaching the necessity of privilege, profit, and power as the cornerstone and entry-plan of heaven and eternal life... But for the radical: for the contemplative: for the honest man: Mother Mary is still adopting her revolutionary stance... and it is towards her burning hand that the mystic reaches...

​Now, how do we nudge ourselves closer to the living image of the Divine Beloved: who is the root of the root of our being? How do we untether ourselves from the theological, economic, and political cords that bind us -- mind, heart, and soul -- to the Unholy Trinity?
​This is the alchemy of the heart... with Mother Mary's words emblazened on our hearts, at least in this Advent Season, we might summon the courage to ask what is the path to transformation? It is always here that we begin...

Perhaps this thought from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel indicates this place of beginning: "One must live and act as if the fate of all time would depend on a single moment." Right here and now, one could very well be tempted to throw out the book, the blog, and the effort... if everything could come down to me is too great of a burden... On the other hand, why not relax and have a good laugh? Just a momentary change of perspective is a potentially dynamic moment: it doesn't have to be big... it just has to be honest! Like a plate of food you could give to someone hungry... In other words, every act of love and justice fulfills the hunger of the Universe for the Adoration that is the example of Mother Mary... and it could be your example as well... because that is exactly how the Universe works: It is wired, as it were, for the Revelation of Every Teeny-Tiny Evidence of the Possibilties of Love...  

Now that we have taken a deep breath, and perhaps also chuckled, we might just as well seriously (ha-ha) begin... and what better place than another holy man, Rabbi Akiba: "All of time is not as worthy as the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel, for all the songs are holy, but the Song of Songs is the holiest of holies." So, look at the Song of Songs: melt into the evidently treasured song and dance of lovers' foreplay... Certainly, the Song of Songs is a mystical treatise... but it is also evidence of an ancient marriage rite, pre-dating the Hebrew peoples... For us, though, it is the story of our melting into love, into the intimacy of a lover's adoration... 

​Sorry, but that's all for today... The Alchemy of the Heart, Part Three will be coming soon...